Category Archives: Nerdstuff

A strong personal brand is beneficial on many levels. At the core it differentiates the designer, developer, marketer, etc, from the rest of the pack within crowded disciplines. It functions as a self-promotion agent that works for the practitioner 24/7/365 ultimately ensuring this person becomes a magnet for new and interesting work opportunities.

A while back I purchased a Logitech Comfort Lapdesk for Notebooks, which, in general, is an excellent product. So excellent that my wife has basically taken ownership of it! As it turns out, it really wasn’t for me, since I needed something… flatter.

So yesterday I purchased a Logitech N315 Portable Lapdesk, and I think it’s going to work better for me since it’s a very low-profile platform on which to work, and it’s flat, not angled. The angle of other lapdesk products causes problems for my wrists when I’m seated, so this works out much better. And it’s very well insulated, so my lap no longer feels as if it’s going to spontaneously combust when my Macbook Pro is resting on it. Score!

Imagine my dismay when I discovered that my Apple Remote had taken a ride through the clothes washer and dryer a couple of weeks ago… As you may imagine, this journey rendered the remote inoperative and useless (albeit totally dry).

Apple Remote

Additionally, searching on the Apple Store was a bit more depressing since the device is evidently no longer available… yikes.

eBay to the Rescue

Thankfully there’s eBay.

After nosing around a bit I was able to find several vendors who had very reasonable prices on basically brand-new remotes. I think mine ended up being $6.99 USD.

At any rate, it arrived today and I was very pleased to try it out while listening to iTunes and it works perfectly. At that rate I probably should have purchased a few extras just in case this happens again…

Let’s hope not.

Strange Behavior

My next task was to resolve a very strange and annoying problem if you have more than one Mac in the proximity while using the remote. This happened to me while on vacation — the remote was pointed at my MacBook Pro, but in addition to controlling it, my wife’s MacBook was also responding to the controller, starting and stopping iTunes while a movie was playing on my computer. Very interesting.

I have always dreaded going to my local Nissan dealer (Northbay Nissan, Petaluma, CA) for service in the morning before work, since it was like being in an information vacuum since they did not have wireless for their customers (isn’t this 2009????).

However that has now changed. I went in this morning and lo and behold… the “Would you like to connect to ‘Nissan Customer'” message appears when I opened up my laptop (expecting dead air)!

So this is great news, and they have yet again proved their superiority in my opinion – from the usability in their cars to the usability now in their lobby!